Well after using FeedDemon at home over the weekend, and having every thing stay in sync, all auto-magic like, I’m happy to pay for this application.

I had one odd start-up issue, where it complained about bad XML or the likes, why I never captured the error I’m not sure. I just assumed it would talk home. But every thing was fine on restart.

The other issue (and I understand why it happens) is when I add a new feed at one location, the other location only gets entries that are newer since the subscription. Where-as the original location has the current backlog (X number of items in the feed.xml), you would think that NewsGator could list the same “back catalogue”, but alias not. So I have some blogs that work has unread items, and others that home has unread. Shrug, not a deal breaker.

I decided to try FeedDemon 2.1 today. After getting annoyed with RSS Bandit over I can’t remember what.

Initial thoughts. I love it. It feels light and slick. I’m am not using it in synchronized mode yet, as my NewsGator account appears to have expired. shrug. But I do plan to use it this way.

I have been reading Nick’s blog for a while, and I like the sound of features that he is developing. I’ve been thinking for a while about features that I’d want to add to RSS bandit, and I realised today that the latest are based on what nick is doing with FeedDemon.

Other features are about how the RSS Bandit code is structured. How it deals with page rendering. How entries are rendered. Offline data caching. and other things. So FeedDemon solves my bigger of these issues. The price is a acceptable, and now I have a credit card, I’m tempted to just buy it.

I’m not bagging the RSS Bandit team. I am really thankful for their effort. But they have day jobs, and I can’t expect anything from them. Yet the price gap to FeedDemon is not really prohibitive, and yet in a small slice kind of way I’ll be helping Nick keep things progressing. Win-win.

I do have some questions, and I’ll update once I have answers:

If I buy a personal licence, can I can run it at both home and work? If I need two copies (or more) this would dampen my desire, as my price point is less than $29.95 x 2 x USD->NZD exchange rate.Yes, it works as I want. See here

Do I need the NewsGator premium account to sync with multiple clients? Thus beyond the first year free would I have to pay an on going cost for this feature?Yes to both, so the current yearly rate would be $19.95USD. See here again. But then looking at my “Account Information” page it would appear the Synchronization is in the Free account….

Ok, so I answered my questions before posting. Just noticed the Subscriptions tree keep the unread count visible as the widget is made skinnier. That was so annoying in RSS Bandit, prior to the component change. The new component auto-horizontal scrolls, which is even more annoying because you then lose sight of the tree structure.